How to think about whether we should have fought the Civil War

I say “we” as if I could have participated, but you know what I mean. I mean “they”

“Why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
•Some guy back in 2017

The Civil War was really bad and lots of people died, and I can see why someone would want to avoid it. Henry Clay practically did backflips to prevent it, although of course he only managed to delay things. Clearly, slavery would have disappeared from America eventually, anyway (based on the fact that at least in overt form it’s disappeared from the rest of the developed world) so would we all have been better off if there had been no war?

In attempting to answer this question, I’m going to assume that all of us, us twenty-first century types, have the same set of goals in mind, to wit:

•end slavery
•ensure civil rights for all
•avoid killing lots of people

Historically, not everyone in America shared these goals, which is why there was a Civil War in the first place. South Carolina started the war with the intent of preventing the first two goals (they ended up preventing the third, as well, but I guess that wasn’t a primary aim; that was just gravy). It takes two parties not to have a war, and South Carolina could mess up our calculations at any time. But we’re going to assume, further, that a lengthy series of compromises, brown-nosing, and concession will keep the south in the union indefinitely. Danegelds, Munich, and the Compromise of 1850 have perhaps indicated that appeasement is not always the best way to make someone behave well, but we can assume it works in this case.

So…should we skip the war and let slavery wither away?

Ha ha! Of course not! Or rather if slavery was goin to wither away in 1863 then of course yes. Brazil didn’t abolish slavery until 1888. Most likely, by avoiding the Civil War you’re extending slavery for another quarter century. There were some four million slaves in the nation on the eve of the Civil War, and the number was growing. You’d need some utilitarian to come in and assign units to how bad life as a slave was compared to how bad getting killed by a gatling gun was, but 4m+ is a lot more than 620,000—the number of Civil War dead, so even if you have to factor in the Civil War not-dead who had a really bad time (because their loved ones died, say, or because they had their limbs amputated, or because their homes burnt down or something), the Civil War was “worth it,” and any calculation that says it wasn’t would require a really rosy view of slave’s life (John C. Calhoun: “I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe etc. etc.”).

Alfred Stratton, double amputee Æ18

The naive view, then is that not only should we have had the Civil War…we should have had one earlier! The sooner slavery gets rooted out, the better for everyone!

This latter statement is true as far as it goes, but there is a problem, which is that if the US had fought the Civil War in 1800, say, the South would have won. Not in the sense of proto-Confederate forces marching through the streets of New York City and changing the national anthem to “Dixie” (the US didn’t even have a national anthem in 1800!), but rather in the sense of the South successfully thumbing its nose at the Union and seceding. The industrial north wasn’t industrial enough; its population was not populous enough. In 1860 the North had over 60% of the population; in 1800 50.3%.

There would be two countries, then, and who knows when slavery would end. You’ll noice that having a civil war and yet not ending slavery is the worst outcome…if not of all possible worlds then at least of the four possible words implied by the binaries have a civil war and end slavery.

A Civil War in 1861 (we know for a fact) would end in a close-race Northern victory; a Civil War in 1800 (I am simply asserting, but I’m pretty sure I’m right) would end in a Southern victory. Somewhere in between 1800 and 1861 comes a tipping-point year, when the South could no longer hold the North back. That year would be closer to 1861 than 1800, but I’ll leave it to you to calculate the exact date. An earlier Civil War might have a lower death toll—because the populations involved would be smaller—but it might also have a higher death toll—because a war between more equal opponents tends to be longer. Work that fact into your equations and it should be simple to come up with the optimal year to start a Civil Was, assuming there are no complicating factors.

•A complicating factor
Edmund Wilson famously wrote that the North pretended they wanted to end slavery, but all they really cared about was preserving the Union; and the South pretended to fight for states’ rights, but all they really cared about was keeping Blacks down. Once the North realized the South would stay in the Union, and once the South realized they could preserve a second-class citizenship for even free Blacks, everyone shook hands and went home. This probably a half, or slightly less than a half, truth, but Wilson’s on to something. Everyone shook hands and went home, more or less, because the North was exhausted and the South was really mad and when you’re exhausted you don’t want to deal with someone who’s really mad.

A coworker once told me, out of thin air and apropos of nothing, “You know, if you wanted to be one country after the Civil War you shouldn’t have burned Atlanta.” He was from Texas (we were in New York City) but was, and is in most regards a progressive coastal elite. Most of his jokes are at the expense of Republicans and people who won’t get vaccinated. But he every once in a while some angry memory from a Texas youth must bubble up, and he has to complain about the Civil War. I didn’t even burn Atlanta! Why are you telling me this, man?

The Civil War went well, insofar as it ended slavery, but everything afterwards could hardly have gone worse. Lincoln killed, Seward stabbed in the face, Johnson a jackass, Reconstruction a total failure. The North was exhausted, remember, and the South had that whole Atlanta thing to obsess over. But exhaustion and anger are products of the fact that the war was long and bitter.

Let’s say that a civil war fought in 1875 would be a cakewalk, the very industrialized and very populous North rolling over the South. The South’s token resistance crumbles everywhere and in a matter of months Richmond capitulates. Best case scenario it’s like the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, with almost no dead and everything over before it started. Even if that’s too much to hope for, it would not be like, you know, the Civil War we know. The Union soldiers would be triumphant and even invincible as they occupied the South. Confederates would be demoralized and cowed, rather than romantic and still looking to start something.

(We’d also be spared a century of Lost Cause posturing, tedious and odious, infecting all Civil War narratives; I tried reading G.A Henty’s With Lee in Virginia (1890) in the hopes that a Victorian Englishman would be at least neutral and possible even sympathetic to abolition, but…oh! his virtuous, kindly Johnny Rebs! His grateful, loyal slaves! His craven, marauding Yanks!)

Our utilitarian who already assigned terrible units to the life of a slave could now assign units to the life of free Blacks under a century of Jim Crow. Presumably a slave’s life has more terrible units than a Jim Crow life. But Jim Crow goes on for (give or take) a hundred years!

Almost certainly delaying the Civil War would yield a better (nowhere to go but up?) Reconstruction. If it’s not much better, then maybe delaying the war wouldn’t be worth it, even with fewer deaths. If it is much better, then delaying the war would certainly be worth it.

I think I’ve done the hard part. Now all you have to do if assign quantities to all the variables and grind through the math. As all the textbooks say, the proof is left to the reader.